Words of the Month: Apocalyptic Post

         I’m not usually a fan of the post-apocalyptic, but I just finished a draft of a short story featuring a cataclysm, so naturally it’s on my mind that our words for enormous disasters come from some interestingly diverse roots.

        The cataclysm of my new story is a flood, and that’s really where all cataclysms originated.  Coming to English from French (which got it from Latin, which got it from Greek) in the sixteenth century, the word originally meant “flood, deluge” and referred especially to Noah’s flood in the Bible.  A deluge, therefore, is the truest sort of cataclysm, and rising sea levels would also certainly count.

        Disaster itself means literally “ill-starred,” coming from the astrological belief that the stars affect events on Earth.  (Previously mentioned in my post From the Stars.)  Thus the truest sort of disaster might be an asteroid collision.

        Apocalypse also comes from the Bible, but unlike a giant flood, it wasn’t originally a disaster at all.  Its roots literally mean “revelation, disclosure, insight.”  This should be a good thing, right?  But the prevalence of end-of-the-world visions in Christian apocalyptic writings eventually meant that when people think of the word “apocalypse,” they think of the end of the world.  However, the general meaning of “any huge disaster” is very recent indeed: not until the 1980s or 90s.  The truest sort of apocalypse would be any sort of “end times” scenario, including perhaps World War III.

        The catastrophe of a Greek drama is the turning point, at which expectations are overturned, and events wind up to their end.  Classical Greek drama being what it is, the roots of the word mean literally a “down-turn,” so it’s not unexpected that the sense of “catastrophe” should have extended between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries into a sudden disaster.  The truest sort of a catastrophe might be something that reads like the tragic irony of Greek drama, so I’m going with climate catastrophe: we’ve known it’s coming but can’t seem to turn ourselves aside from it.  On the other hand, if we really want a turning point, I think pulling back from the brink for a happy ending would certainly qualify!

        Another turning point is the crisis, but this one comes from medicine and its root in Greek means “the decisive point in the progress of a disease.”  Its meaning had broadened by around 1620 to any “decisive moment at which change must come, for better or worse.”  It’s important to note that a crisis is a climax moment that is just as likely to turn towards triumph as towards failure, and yet in our modern pessimistic way, we just about always use the word “crisis” to denote a purely negative disaster.  In the disastrous sense, therefore, the truest crisis should be a pandemic.

        Calamity entered English by the 1550s, from a Latin word for “damage, loss, failure” and also “disaster, misfortune.”  Interestingly, no one knows where the Latin word came from, which means I can’t tell you what the truest sort of calamity might be.

        Of course the English language includes dozens of synonyms for tragic events of suffering and destruction, but I think this relatively short list covers all those that seem to imply a truly epic or even global scale.

        You probably know by now that I’m unwilling or unable to write anything too dark, and this short story I’ve been working on is poignant rather than harrowing.  No doubt some would accuse it of being “cozy catastrophe.”  At any rate, I chose today’s block print illustration to go with my story, rather than depicting a dystopian nightmare scene.  Perhaps someday the story will be ready to share, but for now all I have to share is apocalyptic etymology.

[Picture: Misty Marsh, wood block print by Lynita Shimizu (Image from shimizuwoodcuts.com).]